A GoUpstate Blog

Culture Aplenty is social comment and awareness about all things artsy and culturally interesting in Sparkle City

By Mat Duncan Curator of Collections; Community Development Coordinator Spartanburg Art Museum mduncan@spartanarts.org Recently, I was asked: what, exactly, is abstraction in art? The question has both a short and long answer. The short answer is that, strictly speaking, abstraction or abstract art is art which is uninterested in faithfully portraying scenes from the real world. But the word “abstract” assumes many guises and appears in many places in the English language (and in art). For it and the art… Read More »

Those of you who keep up with the news will no doubt have heard of the recent, record-breaking sale of Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” ($179,000,000). If such a price seems absurd for what is essentially a few smears of colored dirt on a piece of cotton – which is a description that can be applied to most paintings, famous or otherwise – that’s because it is absurd.… Read More »

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Those of you who keep up with the news will no doubt have heard of the recent, record-breaking sale of Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” ($179,000,000). If such a price seems absurd for what is essentially a few smears of colored dirt on a piece of cotton – which is a description that can be applied to most paintings, famous or otherwise – that’s because it is absurd.

“Les Femmes d’Alger”

A lot of people in my profession, if you point out this absurdity to them, will be quick to trot out some tired old arguments about the “pricelessness of masterpieces” or some such nonsense. But the fact is that if “Women of Algiers” didn’t have Picasso’s signature scrawled in its corner, it wouldn’t command such a price. It’s true that Picasso was a master of his craft and certainly among, if not the, greatest artist of the 20th century… but $179,000,000? Well, in the words of Jerry Saltz, “The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.”

Some students asked me today how or why someone spends so much money on a painting, and I put it like this: the $179,000,000 is just a price tag, something separate from the work itself, that wealthy collectors buy into – principally for three reasons – for the celebrity that comes of being able to spend so much money and own something so valuable, for the prestige of owning a part of Picasso who has himself become a sort of luxury brand among the super-wealthy, and as an investment – art as an investment, over the last four decades, has had a 6.5% annual return according to BASI (Blouin Art Sales Index).

I think it goes without saying that high profile, astronomical sales like that of “Women of Algiers” contribute to art being perceived as elitist. But “Women of Algiers” and the art spaces that exhibit works like “Women of Algiers” only represent a proverbial “1%” of the art world. There are millions of artists and artworks in the United States, and there are more museums in the United States than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks combined – over 35,000. Of these 35,000 museums, 15,000 of them reported an annual income of less than $10,000 on their latest IRS returns.

Many of these museums and artists are in small towns or rural areas where, in the words of IMLS’ Mamie Bittner, they act as “community institutions that are the cornerstones of informal learning.” And in many of these areas, the density of museums, considering their small populations, is extremely high. Take for instance Storey County, Nevada, which has a population of only 3,942 and 11 museums. That’s a museum for every 358 people. If Storey County had this same number of museums per capita and was as big as NYC, it would have 23,480 museums. NYC itself has only 414 museums, which adds up to one museum for every 20,000 residents.

Museums, artists, and arts institutions in small cities may not have the same publicity or celebrity as larger institutions in urban centers, but they offer a lot of people a space to engage with their local history and to connect with the time-honored traditions of dance, music, theatre, and art. At the Museum of Modern Art, you can stand in a long line and buy an expensive ticket to jostle against people from all over the world for a couple of minutes in front of a masterpiece you’ve probably already seen a hundred times on the internet. At a much smaller regional museum like SAM, you can encounter art in a way that is more unaffected, for free, with your friends and neighbors, and in a way that benefits local students & artists. SAM and its peer organizations at Chapman Cultural Center offer, to return to an earlier analogy, a real “pricelessness of art” – a pricelessness that comes not from its monetary value or fame, but from its ability to teach and transform us.

Spartans of all ages, sexes, races, etc. come to SAM and the Chapman Center to experience the arts – teachers, students, seniors, young professionals, blue and white collar workers – and they all leave with something unique. As a newcomer to Spartanburg, I was surprised to find the community so passionate about the arts, and at first I thought it must be because of the town’s plethora of dynamic, interesting cultural institutions. In time, however, I realized it was the other way around. It is because Spartans are so passionate about the arts that Spartanburg has the great cultural institutions that it does, and that the SAM curatorial staff is lucky to serve such an engaged community.

Please join us at SAM for QUROUM, a town-hall style meeting during this week’s ArtWalk, for art, refreshment, and dialogue. We want your input into SAM’s long-term planning process.

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Mat Duncan is Spartanburg Art Museum’s Curator of Collections and Community Development Coordinator. Contact Mat at (864) 582-7616 or mDuncan@SpartanArts.org for more information.